A Season of Waiting

Your tree has been carefully selected and placed in the living room. The ornaments have been pulled from storage and arranged just so. The lights have been untangled and strung from top to bottom. Presents have been purchased. Cards have been sent and received. Parties have been prepped and invitations sent. While there will always be a couple last minute items to cross off your list, the only major thing left undone before Christmas is the waiting.

I find the holidays aren’t the only thing I’m waiting for during this time of year. My running and racing seasons are typically long over by this point and I’m deep into my offseason, yet my 2019 races are still too far away to start training. I’m in this little in between period. Not quite close enough to the end of the year to look backwards. Too far away from the new year to look ahead. I’m just . . . waiting.

2019 Schedule

To have any longevity in the sport of ultrarunning, you need to develop patience. You need to pace your efforts in racing, in training, and in life in general. While we want to be epic every day, that’s not sustainable no matter what the Instagram feeds look like. And I’m usually pretty good about being patient and waiting for my next race, but I’m finding it pretty difficult right now. For some reason, I’m extremely excited about my 2019 calendar:

1/19/19 – Phunt 50k

3/02/19 – Naked Bavarian 40M

3/30/19 – Naked Prussian 50M

5/18/19 – Massanutten 100M (tentative)

8/10/19 – Eastern States 100M (tentative)

9/19/19 – The Olde 96er 100M

11/23/19 – JFK 50M (tentative)

I’m currently signed up for 4 races and then have the other 3 which haven’t opened registration yet. This will be my fourth straight year starting out with Phunt/NB40 and the fifth time running the latter race. This will be my first time in 4 years without a 100 miler scheduled in April so am adding the Naked Prussian as I’m a sucker for races that cost less than a buck a mile. Massanutten has been on my wishlist for a couple years now and I’ll run it if I’m able to “win” the lottery. I think everyone has gotten in the past couple years so have my fingers crossed. Then it’s back to ES100 after a one year hiatus followed by a couple of more new races for me.

So here I sit in the dead of winter. . . waiting. It’s not even that I’m waiting for these wonderful events to roll around. Heck, I’m even waiting on my first training cycle to start back up. I mean, who looks forward to training? To 5am alarms and long runs in temperatures below freezing? I guess I’m also waiting on my sanity to return, though I probably have a better chance of getting into Western States and Hardrock in the same year than that to occur. Luckily, time moves more quickly the older I get so before I know it the season of waiting will be over.